UTHSC wins upgrade backing

Leaders pledge to help find funds for deteriorating center

The Commercial Appeal
April 7, 2008
By Richard Locker

NASHVILLE -- The University of Tennessee's efforts to raise awareness among top state officials of the need for increased operational and facilities funding at its Health Science Center in Memphis appear to be succeeding, winning support in places expected and unexpected.

Last month, the UT Board of Trustees placed atop its priority list for construction projects across the UT system a proposed $80 million, 200,000-square-foot research building at the Memphis campus. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission put the new structure at No. 2 on its priority list, behind a long-sought $115 million science building at Middle Tennessee State University.

On Tuesday, higher education officials will tour the Memphis campus for briefings, including the president of East Tennessee State University, home of the state's other public medical school. Dr. Paul Stanton, also former dean of ETSU's medical school, said he is backing efforts to improve funding at both campuses.

The state legislature's top two Republicans -- Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey and House Republican Leader Jason Mumpower -- toured UTHSC last month. Both are from Bristol and count ETSU among their local constituencies.

"We toured that facility and I will have to say that it's atrocious. I did not know how bad it was. And that is a consensus," Ramsey said last week, pledging help with improvements.

Their visit and others were at the invitation of UT administrators in an outreach to state policymakers and community and business leaders.

"We've got the right people focused on (UT) Memphis right now," said Hank Dye, the UT system's vice president for public and government relations. Dye said UT President John Petersen and others are working on a "strategic plan to take UTHSC to the next level as a leader in health education, health care, biomedical research" and its other missions.

The group set to tour UTHSC Tuesday was assembled by THEC Executive Director Rich Rhoda to examine funding issues at both the state's medical schools. UTHSC houses the university's colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, social work, allied health and graduate health education.

"We need to assess all sources of revenue," Rhoda said, "including state appropriations, tuition and fees, clinical fees, transfers, federal, and private-practice payments."

The current campaign is the biggest effort for broad improvements at UT Memphis since 1985, when St. Jude Children's Research Hospital threatened to move to St. Louis, largely because of what it considered better opportunities for research partnerships with Washington University's school of medicine. State officials responded by upgrading the Memphis campus' research facilities and endowing chairs and centers of excellence.

Last November, Petersen sounded the first public alarms about new funding issues at UTHSC. Though not yet a crisis, they have "contributed to potentially dire consequences for the long-term well being of this important statewide facility," he said.

Petersen said state appropriations for the medical school's operations are 42 percent of what the state's higher education funding formula says they should be. But he and Gov. Phil Bredesen said improvements will have to be phased in because of the state's new budget shortfall.

Bredesen said Tuesday that UT Memphis "is a real concern for me and is certainly high on my priority list. I'm facing some pretty significant additional cuts in the budget, so I'm not quite sure how I do anything major down there this year. But identifying the problem, making legislators aware of it, physically seeing the property is a useful thing to do."

State House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, a member of the ALSAC-St. Jude board, was instrumental in the 1985 effort to bolster the campus' research capabilities and is working on the new issues now.

"I have been talking with as many folks as I can about that, including Dr. Petersen. I had the chairman of ALSAC come up and meet with the governor last fall and the majority of the conversation was what we all could do to help UT Memphis. We know there's got to be a lot of work done," Naifeh said.

Dr. Hershel "Pat" Wall, UTHSC's chancellor, said last month that a crumbling campus infrastructure compromises the school's ability to recruit top faculty.

-- Richard Locker: (615) 255-4923

UT Health Science Center, Memphis

--UT administrators are trying to raise awareness of the need for funding improvements at the Memphis campus, inviting top officials for briefings on its status and tours of its facilities.

--Tennessee Higher Education Commission executive director Rich Rhoda has appointed a working group of staff and administrators from across the state's university systems to examine funding issues at both of the state's public medical schools. The group will tour UTHSC Tuesday.

--UT is proposing to build a new $80 million, 200,000- square-foot research building on the campus or the adjoining UT-Baptist Research Park, site of the old Baptist Hospital. UT is talking with Memphis Bioworks Foundation about a potential partnership for construction of the building.

--UT also wants to renovate the existing Nash and Crowe buildings on the Memphis campus, at a cost of $28 million and $20 million respectively. The two projects were numbers 1 (Nash) and 5 (Crowe) on the UT system's statewide priority list for construction projects but were moved off the priority list last month when officials decided it would be too costly to renovate the old buildings into state-of-the-art research facilities, and added the new building to the top of the priority list. They will eventually be renovated for classroom and office space. Crowe was built in 1928 and Nash in 1955.

--Work is under way on a new 6-story, 191,000-square-foot College of Pharmacy Building that will include lecture halls, classrooms, conference rooms equipped for distance learning, research laboratories, computer lab, offices and student space.

--A new Cancer Research Building is opening, the first research building built on the campus in 17 years.